User Registration & Membership <= 5.2.2 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 5.2.3
- Affected Version
<= 5.2.2- CVSS
- 8.1High
- Weakness type
- CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
- CVE
CVE-2026-11961
At a glance
CVE-2026-11961 is a high-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the User Registration & Membership WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.2.2. It carries a CVSS score of 8.1 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 5.2.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed June 2026, reported by Khaled Alenazi (Nxploited).
Vulnerability Overview
The User Registration & Membership – Free & Paid Memberships, Subscriptions, Content Restriction, User Profile, Custom User Registration & Login Builder plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in all versions up to, and including, 5.2.2. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to register as administrators when a site administrator has explicitly created a membership role with admin capabilities. This is not something we consider a vulnerability, and was rejected by our team.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no privileges on the target site, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management
Reaching this weakness in User Registration & Membership <= 5.2.2 takes no account at all. Improper privilege management means the code lets an account end up with capabilities its role should not have.
It converts a low-privileged account into an administrative one, which makes every other restriction on the site irrelevant. For User Registration & Membership the fix is 5.2.3: builds <= 5.2.2 are affected, anything from 5.2.3 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 5.2.3, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: User Registration & Membership 5.2.3 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in User Registration & Membership – Free & Paid Memberships, Subscriptions, Content Restriction, User Profile, Custom User Registration & Login Builder
- 9.9CVE-2023-3342: User Registration <= 3.0.2 Arbitrary File Upload
CVE-2023-3342 - 9.8CVE-2026-32488: User Registration & Membership RCE
CVE-2026-32488 - 8.8CVE-2024-2417: User Registration Authenticated (Subscriber+)
CVE-2024-2417 - 8.8CVE-2023-3343: User Registration <= 3.0.1 PHP Object Injection
CVE-2023-3343 - 8.8CVE-2022-3912: User Registration <= 2.2.4 Arbitrary File Upload
CVE-2022-3912 - 8.1CVE-2026-1779: User Registration & Membership Authentication Bypass
CVE-2026-1779 - 8.1CVE-2025-2594: User Registration & Membership Authentication Bypass
CVE-2025-2594 - 7.5CVE-2023-27459: User Registration <= 2.3.2.1 PHP Object Injection
CVE-2023-27459
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